***UPDATE*** Bugsy Malone is currently on sale at Amazon.co.uk for the insane price of Ł3.57. Buy first, ask questions later.
“He’s a sinner, candy-coated, for all his friends he always seems to be alone, but they love him…”
Bugsy Malone.
I can tell you my birthday wish now because I’m fairly sure it’s never going to come true. During the seventies whenever I had to blow out the candles I used to wish that I was one of the Brady Bunch. I don’t know where I thought I’d fit in, I just thought they were fantastic. Sometime around then I remember watching Nationwide when they were showing the auditions for Annie in the West End. I thought it was a disgrace that they were only auditioning girls and I used to practice in front of the mirror dreaming of my big break.
Bugsy Malone brings together all those crazy childhood feelings of wanting to be a star and wanting to sing my way to happiness and wanting to be surrounded by other kids who lived to sing and dance. I loved it the first time I saw it and I loved it when I watched it with my three children last week.
The movie is set in prohibition-era America. Bugsy, our hero, works both sides of the law without doing any real harm. He makes his money scouting boxing talent and doing odd-jobs for Fat Sam, mob boss and owner of his own speakeasy.
One night at Fat Sam’s where “anybody who is anybody will soon walk through the door” Bugsy bumps into a doll named Brown (“Brown? Sounds like a loaf of bread.”). Blousey Brown (“Sounds like a stale loaf of bread.”).
Blousey is there trying to audition for Sam to become one of his chorus
girls but, like so many others before her, Sam tells her to come back tomorrow. The speakeasy is full of colourful characters such as Razamataz the bandleader; Tallulah, star performer and Sam’s main squeeze and Fizzy the clumsy cleaner who dreams of being on the stage. Like Blousey, Fizzy is always being fobbed off with the carelessly cruel promise of "tomorrow". But when the club empties for the night and Fizzy is left alone to wash the floor he retrieves his dance shoes from their resting place and pours his heart into a song.
“Tomorrow never comes. What kind of a fool do they take me for? Tomorrow - a resting place for bums, a trap set in the slums but I know the score. I won’t take no for an answer, I was born to be a dancer now.”
Back on the street, Sam’s gang of hoodlums take some time out to revel in their badness:
“We coulda been anything that we wanted to be. But don't it make your heart glad? That we decided - a fact we take pride in. We became the best at being bad.”
But there’s trouble around the corner. Dandy Dan’s rival mob have got their hands on a dangerous new weapon and they’re looking to muscle in on Fat Sam’s action. The town ain't big enough for both Fat Sam and Dandy Dan. Before our tale is told, it's going to get real messy and not in the way you'd expect.
Along the way Bugsy uncovers a potential prizefighter, falls in love with Blousey and helps Sam fight back against the nasty tactics of Dandy Dan after Sam’s boys are rubbed out.
Against almost insurmountable odds, our hero helps even the balance between the two rivals and sets the stage for the big rumble.
The recently released DVD restores this long deleted movie to its place in the forefront of post 60s musicals. The extras include a witty and warm full length commentary from writer/director Alan Parker as well as a tremendous feature which sets the finished movie against a detailed comic book-style storyboard so you can see where every shot came from and the development of the director's vision.
This was Alan Parker's first full-length film as a director. He had carried the idea of the movie around with him for a couple of years before a young producer called David Puttnam started to push him towards making the movie. They both knew the key was in the songs, but Parker didn't have a note in his head or any idea where to get one. Puttnam asked him who his first choice of songwriter was and Parker named Paul Williams. You may not think you know Paul Williams, but you know his work. Williams wrote the lyrics for 'Rainy Days and Mondays'. He put the words to 'We've Only Just Begun'. He shared an Oscar with Barbra for 'Evergreen'. Best of all, Paul Williams wrote about "the lovers, the dreamers and me" in my favourite Muppet moment - 'Rainbow Connection'.
For Bugsy Malone, Williams took Alan Parker's vision and composed a near-perfect collection of songs ideally suited to the story and its characters. Perhaps the only false step in the whole process was the decision by Parker and Williams to have the actors mime the songs while professional singers were dubbed in. It was an artistic decision meant to stretch the fourth wall and further highlight the artifice of the production, but it still jars today as the original intention remains lost on the audience. On an interesting side note, in the climactic scene when the crashing piano chord gives the rival gangs pause, it is the voice of Paul Williams himself coming from the mouth of Razamataz the bandleader.
The actors, many of them appearing in front of a camera for the first (and last) time are as good as you could expect. Scott Baio makes a charming and disarming Bugsy. He manages the little movements like setting his hat further back on his head with panache and he sells every one of Bugsy's lame jokes as if they were precious stones. Florrie Dugger as Blousey carries the weight of every young actress who arrives in the big city with stars in her eyes. World-weary yet inescapably optimistic about life and love, it's a winning performance.
The supporting cast are equally strong. Fat Sam and Tallulah are both played with verve and a sense of style. I know John Cassisi who played Sam never made another movie, but I haven't been able to trace the post-Bugsy career of Jodie Foster. Who knows what she got up to?
Further down the bill there are a few names worth spotting. Dexter Fletcher gets a big laugh for his small role as Babyface. Mark Curry, erstwhile presenter of Blue Peter, plays a theatre producer trying to lure his star played by Bonnie Langford back to the stage.
It's hard for me to express my affection for this movie. I remember searching for the soundtrack on cassette many years ago and being told it was only available on vinyl. I didn't have a record player. Then about four years ago I found the soundtrack on CD in a HMV store in Paris. Finally this year I used some of the free money I earned doing Internet surveys to bid for the DVD on Ebay. I knew that I loved the movie, but the big question was "does it still play in Peoria?"
I sat my three kids (9, 7 and 5) on the couch and gave them some information about Prohibition. I explained what a speakeasy was and how organized crime had grown powerful in a time where the will of the people rebelled against the draconian legislation of an over-protective government. Then I pressed play. Five minutes in my beautiful five year old flower said to me "What, daddy, all the grown-ups in it are children?" The boys were too astonished for questions. Days later they are still trying to catch all the words to "So You Wanna Be a Boxer." All we know for certain is that:
"You might as well quit, If you haven't got 'it'."
Bugsy Malone has 'it'… in spades.
Bugsy Malone Special Edition is a Region 2 DVD rated U for Universal: Suitable for all.
Amazon.co.uk is selling the DVD for an amazing Ł6.99 and you can buy it together with the CD soundtrack for less than 15 quid. Get it for someone you like because, as the song says:
"You give a little love and it all comes back to you."
Pictures of Bugsy Malone (DVD)
Special Edition DVD cover
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Production Year: 1999 - Music / Performing Arts - Original Language: English - Classification: Exempt - Starring: Donny Osmond, Joan Collins, Richard Attenborough
I grew up with this film. My boyfriend during the Seventies was one of the characters in Fat Sam's gang in the actual film. His photo is on the dvd cover. Had to watch it over and over again. The dancers came from my local dance school in Leeds along with Mark Curry and Kathryn Apanaweicz ( Richard Whiteley's partner no less). At the tender age of 12 my daughter played Tallullah at a local theatre in the stage adaption a few years ago.Wow was it a blast from the past. It is a terrific musical, ahead of its time.
yeahbutnobut 22.11.2005 16:49
"My congratulations no-one likes you anymore - bad guys, we're the very worst" Yippiee!! I love this film, fantastic review as well, a well deserved E!! Vicki :o)
sarahbooke 25.05.2005 13:44
Fantastic review. Not seen this film in years - wanna watch it now!
Remember that scene in Jerry Maguire where the title character suddenly realises the ... more
foolhardiness of his impulsively written manifesto? That's how director Alan Parker (Mississippi Burning) ought to feel every day of his life since making this dopey, ...
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![Bugsy Malone [DVD] [1976]](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/81240001.jpg "Bugsy Malone [DVD] [1976]")
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